


The Lucis Caelum-Fleuret Family Thanksgiving

by jade304



Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Family Reunions, Gen, It's not permanent, Meet the Family, Multi, Not to be taken seriously, Thanksgiving Dinner, kind of, most ships are background sans ravus/aranea
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-27
Updated: 2019-03-27
Packaged: 2019-12-18 15:44:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,675
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18252899
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jade304/pseuds/jade304
Summary: Ravus takes Aranea to Thanksgiving dinner at Ardyn's home to meet his whole extended family.Somnus is there.It goes about as well as "Somnus is there" implies.





	The Lucis Caelum-Fleuret Family Thanksgiving

Ravus and Aranea sit in the car long after the engine’s stopped. From inside the house, they can see all the lights on; somewhere within, there’s soft piano music playing. There’s Christmas decorations already strung up, lights glowing along the porch railings and a large, green wreath hung up on the door. It seems like a nice enough place, but Ravus is holding the steering wheel so hard his knuckles are going white.

“What are you so nervous about?” Aranea asks. “I’ve met your family. They seem nice.”

“Yes,” Ravus says. “Well. That’s my mother’s family.”

“What about Noctis and all them?”

“Yes.”

Somewhere in the backyard, some dogs start to bark.

“...So, the problem?”

“The problem,” Ravus sighs, “is when the two of them get together. Especially this year.”

“What’s so special about this year?” Aranea asks, getting out of the car. Ravus looks hesitant, but he takes his keys and follows her.

“This year, my uncle Somnus has finally been allowed back.”

“...Allowed?”

“No one wanted to speak to him for a while. Family drama.”

“Hm.”

He walks around to the passenger side door and holds Aranea’s arm, a sudden frenzied look on his face.

“Promise me that if someone starts bleeding, you will not call 911.”

“I... _Ravus,_ what is going _on._ ”

“Please. Some blood is fine. Trust me.”

“Why is -”

“I need you to trust me.”

A woman interrupts them, coming out on the porch; it looks like one of Ravus’s aunts. She notices them and waves; her face looks tired.

“Hello, Ravus!”

He waves back.

“Hello, Aunt Aera.”

“I see you brought Aranea.”

“Are they already at it?”

“I told them to go out back and let it out.”

The dog s start barking even louder. Aranea hears something heavy and metal clang against the pavement, and someone scream, “ _Somnus!”_

Aera looks at Aranea.

“Dinner should be ready in a half hour, if you want to come inside?”

 

Noctis pats an open seat next to him on the couch; him and Ravus’s sister have sandwiched a tall, blonde kid in between them, the three of them playing some game on their phones.

“This is Ignis,” Noctis says, patting the boy’s arm. “He’s used to all this. He won’t run.” He looks up at Aranea. “Please don’t run.”

Luna kicks him.

“I’m...going to go hang up our coats,” Ravus says. “Have fun.”

Aranea sinks awkwardly into seat besides Noctis. “So, uh. I haven’t met your uncle before, have I?”

“Uncle Somnus? Uh. No. He hasn’t been around for...a while.”

“Two years,” Ignis says. He looks up from his phone. “We’ve heard little from him as to _why,_ but it’s apparent that he -”

“ _What? Did you try and murder her, too?”_

_“Can you not say that so loud, he’s inside with Regis and he’s going to hear you -”_

“ _Oh, I’m sure he’d be delighted to know!_ Morpheus! Did you know that your fa – _you nearly took my arm off!”_

“ _I was trying for your leg!”_

“For context, we didn’t know Somnus had a son until he showed up an hour ago with him.”

“He’s adorable,” Luna adds. Aranea isn’t sure what to say about literally _any_ of this. “For what it’s worth.”

“Noctis,” Ravus says, sounding and looking even more exhausted than he had been mere minutes ago. “Why is your father trying to chase down a toddler?”

“Oh. That’s Morpheus.”

“...Noctis.”

“Yeah?”

“Please tell me that boy is your brother and not at all related to Somnus.”

“He’s my brother and not at all related to Somnus,” Noctis echoes, matching Ravus’s tone.

“Thank you.”

Ravus sits down on the arm of the sofa next to Aranea, smushes his head into her shoulder, and lets out a long-suffering sigh.

 

Eventually, the noise from outside settles down and someone lets in the dogs, and Luna and Noctis go off to feed them; Aranea, bored, wanders into the kitchen, leaving Ravus to talk with Noctis’s boyfriend about something or another.

Aera’s busy finishing up dinner, and a man almost identical to Noctis is sitting in one of the empty chairs around the counter. He’s bouncing a small toddler on his leg, _also_ identical to Noctis, albeit more baby. The man has gauze wrapped around his forehead; Aranea suddenly remembers her instructions to _please do not worry if someone is bleeding._

The fact that they haven’t even eaten yet and someone is already bleeding seems...worrisome.

“Hello,” the man says pleasantly, “I’m Somnus. You must be here with Ravus?”

“I...yeah,” Aranea says. He holds out his hand for her to shake. She doesn’t take it. “Hey.”

He holds out his hand for a few minutes more, before the boy on his lap starts reaching to shake it instead.

“Hey, _hey,”_ He says, gently. “Hello, Morpheus. I know who you are already. Does Aranea know who you are already?”

Morpheus looks up at Aranea, and god damn, the Lucis Caelums really _do_ all look the same. The same way that Ravus’s sister, aunt, and mother all look like clones of each other. He quickly slaps his father in the face, a very noble attempt at a wave, nearly missing the bleeding part of his head wound. Somnus flinches.

“Hm. He says hello.”

“Hi,” The boy peeps quietly. He smacks Somnus’s head again. “Hi.”

Somnus sighs.

Aera, relatively silent throughout this entire exchange, turns around.

“How was the drive up here, Aranea? Wasn’t it supposed to start snowing in Niflheim tonight?”

“Probably,” Aranea says, grabbing for the opening when she sees it. “We had trouble getting on the highway, but the plows are working on clearing the -”

There’s a smack against the window. All four of them turn around; Morpheus yells, “Look! It’s Ardyn!”

“It...yes, that’s your uncle Ardyn,” Somnus says.

Ardyn hasn’t been bandaged up, and is freely bleeding from a slice on his cheek. He’s yelling something incoherent, and throwing snowballs at the side of the house.

“He’s fine,” Aera says; Aranea didn’t realize she looked concerned. “I told him to let it out before coming in for dinner.”

He’s still shouting; Aranea sees him pick up an axe – wait, was that what she heard being thrown around before – and toss it into a snowbank. He screams at it.

“He’ll be fine.”

Ardyn really doesn’t look fine, but Somnus has gone back to bouncing the baby, and Aranea is really just ready to go to bed.

 

Aranea and Ravus end up seated next to Ravus’s mother and Mors at the dinner table. Honestly the preferable outcome; the two of them just seem...out of place, somehow. It makes Aranea feel a little more at home amongst fellow misfits.

They’re almost all there on time, sans Noctis and Ignis hurrying in at the last second, faces both bright red. Ravus snorts; Aranea smacks the back of his head.

They all take hands, and Aranea hasn’t been in a church in years, but there’s something to be said about the guy leading the dinner prayers with a bunch of bandages on his face and a darkened bruise on his mouth. Regis keeps looking between Ardyn, one of the only three people saying the grace along with Aera and Luna, and Somnus, who’s staring at his plate and looks like he’s trying really hard not to burst out into wild laughter. Ravus squeezes her hand.

_Please just roll with it._

When it comes around to Aranea to say something she’s thankful for, her mind blanks, and her mouth says “snowplows”. Everyone nods. Mors says, very pointedly at his nephews, that he’s grateful for his family. Someone scoots their chair. Morpheus is grateful for mash potato.

The meal goes...alarmingly pleasant. Granted, the two elephants in the room do not speak much to one another, but everyone else is making idle conversation, Luna’s two dogs waddling back and forth underneath the table, waiting for food to drop.

Noctis suddenly flies out of his chair, and the table goes deadly silent.

“Uh.”

He plops back down equally fast, sinking low in his chair. “Sorry.”

Besides him, Luna starts laughing. Ignis, to Noctis’s right, is clearly trying _very_ hard not to look smug. Ravus makes a disgusted noise.

“At least wait until after dinner, Noct,” Regis says, and Noctis slides so slow in his seat that only his forehead is peeking above the table. Ignis unsubtly coughs.

“Oh, let them be foolish kids, Regis,” Ardyn says. “We were all young once.”

Somnus coughs.

“Something to contribute, Somnus? You didn’t really say that much during grace.”

“I’m grateful for my wonderful son,” He says, patting Morpheus on the shoulder; the boy is busy trying to craft shapes out of his mashed potatoes. “And for my _wonderful_ brother, for finally agreeing to let me come back for the holidays this year.”

“So, Somnus,” Clarus – Aranea recognizes Regis’s husband, mostly from the news - “where is Gilgamesh this year?”

Somnus shrugs. “I told him he could come along, but he said he’d be a bit late.”

Ardyn hums. “Wouldn’t it be polite to show up on time? You all act as if you have two thousand years to get everything done.”

“Wouldn’t it be polite if you had a bit of patience?” Somnus asks. The table has begun to go quiet.

“Oh, I’ve done my fair share of waiting,” Ardyn says. “Wouldn’t you say, my dear?”

Aera looks at both Somnus and Ardyn, weighing her answer carefully. “I...well, I think that if -”

Noctis suddenly stumbles from his chair _again,_ coughing into the crook of his arm.

“Whoops, sorry you guys, gotta interrupt, uh, bathroom, and all that -”

He shoves his chair in loudly as he leaves. Luna watches him go, and gives Ignis a shove.

“ _Really?_ In front of the salad?”

“It got you two to stop _bickering,_ didn’t it,” he says, glaring down both Somnus and Ardyn. The two of them cough and manage to look guilty.

Morpheus drops his plate onto the ground, a noble effort to the distraction cause, and the dogs go in for it. “Whoopsie.”

Somnus busies himself with getting him another plate, and the argument is mostly forgotten.

Noctis wanders back in sometime later, and Aranea starts laughing in spite of herself. Ravus buries his face in his hands, and she hears him mumble,

“Oh, gods. They’ve gotten to my girlfriend.”

 

Absolutely no one except Aera, Regis, Clarus, and Luna are allowed to help with dishes and cleanup. Something about stabbings and too many knives available. There is zero argument about this. Aranea doesn’t question it.

 

There’s a knock at the front door a bit later; Ravus goes to answer it.

It’s Gilgamesh, trying to carry a bunch of pie in his arms.

Somnus hurries to help him, Morpheus close on his heels, and takes some from his arms. Somnus has to actually _hop_ to reach to kiss Gilgamesh’s cheek.

Ardyn, who Aranea had been having a relatively nice conversation with (as far as Ardyn Lucis Caelum conversations can be) up until that point, goes deathly silent, and glares at Gilgamesh’s back as the small family of three walks back through the entry hall.

“Um. So, what’s the beef with Gilgamesh, then?”

“Oh, he’s in on it with my brother, rest assured,” Ardyn tells her, getting up to follow them.

Aranea doesn’t know what “in on it” means.

She asks Ravus, and he asks her, again, to not question it.

 

It’s _really_ good pie.

Gilgamesh turns very pink when she tells him this.

 

At least Ravus’s family doesn’t seem like the type to play football. Aranea has no idea how to play football. OP has no idea how football works. No one in the Lucis Caelum-Fleuret family is a Thanksgiving football person. Sports!

Mostly, they sit around the living room, back to the same casual atmosphere there was before dinner. Noctis’s parents, Clarus, and Ravus’s mother are all congregated in the dining room with Mors, talking; Noctis has gone back to chatting with Luna and Ignis, seemingly determined to ignore the rest of the family’s existence. Gilgamesh is sitting with Morpheus, letting him smack a plastic toy sword against the his raised palms. Ardyn and Aera...are being disgusting on the couch opposite everyone else, honestly; Aera is cradled in his lap, Ardyn is running his fingers through her hair and murmuring quietly.

Aranea and Ravus are piled up similarly on the couch, although she feels Ravus already dozing off, and she’s getting tired from watching television.

Somnus is absent.

This should probably be concerning, but it’s Aranea’s first Thanksgiving, and she doesn’t yet know this is a cause for concern.

 

She wakes up to Ravus furiously shaking her shoulder.

“Aranea.”

“Mmn…?”

“Aranea, wake up. We need to move.”

“Mmn. Don’t move. Sleepy.”

“If you don’t move, my uncle is going to crash into you in about eight seconds with a giant, heavy sword.”

“Hmnzat?”

“Six.”

Ravus yanks her up to her feet, and Aranea is about to grouch something at him when she feels someone holler and fall into the spot where she just was.

Fabric tears.

“I told you.”

Ravus walks her outside, rubbing her eyes, where...everyone else is congregated.

“Where’s the fire?” She asks, slightly more alert now. From inside, there’s another crash.

“We’re making snowmen,” Aulea says. She, Aera, and Gilgamesh are all helping to try and distract Morpheus from running back inside.

Everyone...everyone else is sitting around in the yard, also making snowmen.

...

What.

“Ravus,” Aranea leans to whisper in his ear, “why are we not allowed inside the house.”

“They’ve brought out the swords,” Ravus says. He doesn’t explain who “they” is. She’s learned that much already. “We’re trying to keep the boy from getting hurt.”

Aranea, still half asleep, nods, because this makes perfect sense.

Morpheus looks up from his sloppy snow creation.

“Can I go play with sword with uncle Ardyn and papa, too?”

“Only when you have the biggest snowman of all of us,” Aera says, turning him _away_ from the house; Aranea sees Somnus smack face-first into the front window, and Ardyn appear to shove him down onto the floor. The glass rattles. “How about it?”

“...Okay.”

 

9 p.m seems an acceptable time to make a grand escape to drive to their hotel.

Aera offered to let them stay, that they had an extra room especially with the storm moving in in earnest, but it’s only a mile or so up the road, and Ravus looks ready to run for it.

Once they’re in the safety of the car, Ravus lets out a breath like he’d been holding it all night.

“So,” He says. He looks honest-to-gods nervous. “You aren’t...going to suddenly run away after all that or anything. Right?”

Ravus...really does have a weird extended family. But at least Aranea hasn’t felt the urge to call the police or an ambulance. That surely has to count for _something,_ right?

“I love you, honey,” Aranea says, slowly. “But I’m _really_ concerned about your uncles.”

  
“They’re fine,” Ravus says. “Mostly. Two years ago, Somnus nearly killed my aunt Aera -”

“ _What?”_

“And he actually did kill Ardyn -”

“ _What?”_

“He was only medically deceased for about three minutes, technically, but -”

“I want this story when we get to the hotel.”

“I was hoping I could go sleep this whole adventure off, but if you insist.”

There’s a sudden furious tapping on the car door, and Ravus jumps in his seat. Sighing, he rolls down the window; Noctis, Ignis, and Luna are all standing huddled in the snow.

“Uh. Can we tag along and sleep on your floor? Or something. Please. They’re probably going to be at this for a while.”

Ravus stares straight ahead, sighs, and unlocks the car door.

“Fine. But _you_ are going to be the ones to tell my girlfriend the Ardyn-Aera Death Story.”

“Oh,” Noctis says. “Yeah. Forget what anyone else told you about it, there’s a real version and a fake version, and Somnus made up the fake version so that -”

Ah.

Family drama really is great.


End file.
